1st trip to the zoo this year!

We decided since the weather was so nice we’d try and take Stratton to the zoo after my Dr. Appt. We went to Copeland’s to eat lunch and then headed to the mall for a bit, I just knew Stratton would pass out in the stroller and get a nap before the zoo- I was wrong! We got to the zoo around 2pm and it was nice and sunny (there was a chance of rain) but it was HOT! Apparently all the animals thought so too, because a lot of them were no where to be found! The LR zoo was a joke compared to the Memphis zoo. The more zoo’s we visit the more I realize how great the Memphis zoo really is! We still had a good time, but only stayed a little over an hour since it was so hot!!

Clinging to J for dear life! He was scared of the lion!!

We stopped in Searcy on our way home and dropped S off with Jarrod’s parents for the weekend. I have a LONG to-do list for this weekend before we are off on vacation on Wednesday! I hope I can get it all done by the time Sunday rolls around!!

Whew! We’re already halfway there!

Pregnancy Stats:

How Far Along: 20 weeks

Size of baby: About the size of a cantaloupe, 6.5 inches and 10.6 oz

Weight gain: Finally gained some weight! 7 whole pounds!

Maternity Clothes: wearing only maternity pants now, can still wear some regular tops

Gender: Don’t ask?! {see below}

Movement: Still feeling lots of movement. Jarrod got to feel it for the first time last week!

Sleep: About the same, still tossing and turning a lot and finding it harder to get comfy.

Cravings: Nothing new here. Just hungry all the time!

Symptoms: Ichy skin, soreness and back pain

Best Moment This Week: Seeing the baby in 3d & 4d at our ultrasound!

20 week appointment: Our doctor’s appointment on Friday was at 10am, which means we need to be leaving at 7:30. Well. . . .we accidently slept in and didn’t get up till 6:30! To my surprise we were actually leaving our house at 7:45am! That’s record timing!! Especially for all three of us! We had the ultrasound scheduled first! I was so anxious and ready to finally find out if we were having a boy or girl! The u/s tech we had this time wasn’t the friendliest gal, and I know she had a lot to look for at this ultrasound (they try and find all the organs and measure a bunch of stuff to make sure the baby is growing normally and there are no problems) BUT she could have been a little more talkative- she said like 2 words the whole time! It took forever, she told us the baby was breach and she had a hard time getting the pictures and measurements she needed, and Stratton was getting restless, I was trying to be calm but then at the end she asked us if we wanted to know the gender (I assumed she already knew) we of course said yes, and she looked and looked and then said “I’m not seeing a boy, so I’m thinking it’s probably a girl”. I was so surprised. Last time it was the exact opposite!! We did get to see baby in 4d, she switched it over for us to look at, and you can’t see a whole lot, but the baby has mine and Stratton’s nose- I can see that already! After the u/s the nurse took me to get weighed, and we were talking and she asked if we found out what the gender was and I told her what the tech said. She said “Well, it’s a girl and I think it’s a girl are two different things” so then the nurse went in and talked to the tech and then she came in the room and told us not to get anything monogrammed or buy anything pink, that the results we not clear enough to really say one way or the other! They also said they didn’t get all the shots they needed of baby and couldn’t find it’s bladder at all, so they’d have to do another u/s at our next appointment. Another 4 week wait. . .  .this is getting old. Hopefully next time we will have the other u/s tech, too. She was much nicer and made it a better experience.

Otherwise the baby looks great. The Dr said it’s measurements are right on target, and everything looks normal. HB was good and my blood pressure was good. They did routine blood work again this time. The Dr. was actually also really surprised that they couldn’t make out any “boy parts” she said that the last u/s she was pretty confident it was a boy, even though they couldn’t tell for sure! Ha! So who knows!! It’s more of a mystery now than before!! My next appt is on May 25th, I will be 24 weeks, so this baby better be on it’s best behavior that day! Hopefully that u/s won’t be as long, either! Stratton was good but he just gets impatient in a dark room with nothing to do! He was also not at all convinced that the baby might be a girl. I think he’s in denial.  He kept saying “Noooo, it a boy!”. I guess we can’t really argue with him, I just throw in the idea that it MIGHT actually be a girl and he dismisses it immediately!

It’s hard to think about being halfway there already. I feel pretty good. I had an episode last week with my back. My guess is I carried Stratton around too much and pulled something. Anyway it took almost all week of babying it for the pain and soreness to go away. I got the Dr. to give me a script for some muscle relaxers if it should happen again! I am just starting to “show”. One of my friends at church told me that I actually look pregnant now- gee thanks! Haha! And another girl that we are not close to, asked Amy if I was pregnant, so that makes me feel pretty good, halfway there and people are just starting to notice? Not bad. I have gained a whopping 7 lbs so far. When I was 23 weeks with Stratton I had gained 18, so I am hoping that I won’t gain so much this time around. I am also feeling pretty good about my blood sugar levels. I feel a lot less bloated and swollen, I am thinking that’s a good sign and maybe I won’t have to mess with gestational diabetes this time around! Well see, at my next appointment I’ll have to do another 1 hour glucose test.

I guess we are just going to have to move on with the naming process. I thought I shouldn’t worry about it until we knew what we were having, but this could be a repeating problem so I guess we’d better go ahead and pick something out for both just in case! I’ve had a few people tell me I just need to wait until he/she is born now, since it’s already given us so much trouble. . .I’m thinking I can’t wait that long!!

Wore out from the weekend!

Friday night while Stratton stayed at Jarrod’s parents house and played with his cousin Archer, Jarrod and I went to the Sara Bareilles concert at Harding. Actually I went and he tagged along as my chauffer. But I think he was surprised at how awesome she was! I am so glad we went. I almost backed out because it was raining and I was really tired and it didn’t start till 8pm. . . anyway I’m glad we decided to go it was really good! She is amazing live! We got back to Jarrod’s parents house around 11pm.

We stayed the night in Searcy Friday night since our garage sale was Saturday morning. So we go up (really, really) early and were busy with the garage sale till about noon. Things slacked off so we called it a day! We sold SO much stuff! We haven’t had a garage sale since Stratton was 3 months old, so we had WAY too much stuff! We won’t wait that long till the next one, that much stuff equals too much work!! And since it was a 3 family sale, you can imagine all the stuff!!  Jarrod and I had mostly .25 and .50 cent items and we made almost $300! I was really happy we made that much with such little items. But I am mostly glad that we got rid of all that junk! After lunch and packing up the stuff we didn’t sale (we donated a lot of the leftovers to a local church), the guys took all the tables and racks down and Stratton and I took a nap! We got up about 4pm, got ready and then headed to KJ’s in Judsonia for Jennifer’s bday dinner. I got a huge plate of fish, shrimp and stuffed crab for Stratton and I to share. . . bad idea. That boy ate almost all my food! After supper we came back to Jonesboro and got home around 8:00pm. Sunday we didn’t do much. Since we had been out late and up early, Stratton and I both needed to catch up on some zzzzz’s so we both took a long nap Sunday afternoon!

Also, my phone crashed on Saturday. So, Saturday afternoon Jarrod had to go to Verizon and get me a new one, and of course my contacts won’t sync with this phone! Oh the joys of a new phone!

This week will be a short work week (Yay!), since I have an Dr. appt in Little Rock on Friday. It will be the longest week ever because they will do another ultrasound to determine the gender (again) and hopefully the baby will cooperate this time! It’s at 10 am, so hopefully by at least noon we should be sharing the news! I am really anxious!! We are planning on taking Stratton with us again this time, I hope it all works out. I feel like if it’s a girl, he’s going to need to hear it from the Dr. He’s convinced it’s a boy (baby brother) and even when we ask, “what if it’s a girl”- his answer is “but it’s a boy?” and looks confused! We’ll see. . . .

In other news, Stratton is doing awesome with potty training. The only time he is wearing a pull-up is to sleep in! He went all week last week without a single accident!! He got to go to TSC with Jarrod and pick out a new tractor! He got a John Deere spray rig, of course! He is excited about going to the beach and talks about it a lot! He is also starting to ask more questions about the baby. The other day he asked me “Mommy, we going to have a baby?”.  Then when I asked him if he would sing to the baby when it cries he said “Nooooo, we put him in his bed and shut the door when he cry”. . . haha!

Vacation?! Yes, please!!

I am sooo excited!! 2 weeks from today, I hope to be on my way to the beach!! And I’m telling you we NEED a vacation!!

This is a pic taken from the balcony of the condo!

Pretty much as soon as we found out I was pregnant, I started trying to plan our next beach visit! I knew I couldn’t go a whole year without at least one trip! And, yes I was just there less than a year ago, but to be honest, our trip last September (during the tropical storm) wasn’t a real beach vaca- since it lacked the sun, and we didn’t get to spend hardly any time on the beach! Plus that trip was a miserable! The tropical storm with all the rain and wind was bad enough, but then that poor kid drowned, and on the way home Stratton got sick- real sick- and that was awful! I hope we have better luck this time around!!

This time it’s just going to be Jarrod, Stratton and myself. We thought we’d better do something just the three of us while we can. We usually like to go with others to the beach, but it just seemed like we should have some family time before the summer and things get real crazy!! And plus, I don’t plan to travel very far after 25 weeks. I think the farthest I will be going is Little Rock to the Dr. and maybe the lake! (I’m even going to miss the Monsanto partner meeting in Kansas City in June- boo!) So it’s now or never for a vacation!

Our plan is to leave Wednesday, the 2nd, around 3pm and drive to Madison, MS and stay the night. Then we will get up and drive the rest of the way on Thursday morning, hopefully getting there around noon or a little after. We are trying to break the trip down there up a little to make it easier on Stratton- and me! And this way we’ll get a little out of the day on Thursday instead of driving all day long and getting there late!

We will be there from Thursday to Tuesday- 5 nights. Which seems weird, I know. But that’s just worked best with Jarrod’s schedule. We are trying to avoid him taking too many days off, since I’d rather him save as many as he can in the event that we have a repeat of what happened when I was pregnant with Stratton.

I am working on an itinerary (you know me, I have to have a plan!) but unless it rains (or we get scorched), I figure we will be spending all our time on the sand! Stratton is already talking about it non-stop!  He asks me almost everyday “We going to the beach tomorrow?”. . .I can’t blame him, I’m really looking forward to it too!!

Excuse the mess!

I am playing with my blog settings, so please look past the weird background and things! I am trying to figure out a way for the background to look the same on a ipad and on the computer. I design blogs on the computer- but I, like most of you probably,  view my blog and other’s blog on my ipad and right now it’s really hard to read on the ipad! I know there’s  way to do it and it look good, but since I’m not a computer programmer (I failed that course in college) it takes me awhile to play with things and figure it out!

Best compliment I ever got!

Delicious!

Stratton picked the menu, Spaghetti with meatballs and corn on the cob. About halfway though he looked and me and with a huge smile and the most animated voice said “Mommy, this is BA-LICIOUS!”. I said “Thank you, I fixed it just for you!” He smiled and said “THANK YOU!”. Then he must have seen how much this tickled me, because he did it about 5 more times. Then I decided to get my camera and of course he’s not as animated on camera! I guess this boy likes meatballs, because we had leftovers last night and he ate 6 of them!! I fixed him 2 initially and he asked for more twice!! He also loves corn on the cob! It sure is a mess, but at least he eats it and it’s not french fries or mac and cheese!

Water Boy

Saturday afternoon it was so nice Stratton and I played outside for a little while before his nap. Jarrod had the water house out in the yard from where he had watered the tree and Stratton found it and started playing with it. There was still a little water left in the hose that squirted out and he thought that was just so neat to water the yard! Well, I thought to myself. . .the yard and flowerbeds could use a drink (you can see in the pics how dry and brown our yard is!), so why not let him play with the water hose?? After spraying himself a few times and completely soaking himself, I asked him if he wanted to put his swim trunks on and of course he did! He had so much fun and my shrubs and plants all got watered! He also washed his lawn mower- just like Daddy does he said- and he watered all the ant hills (he’d get down and stick the nozzle in the hole and flush the ants out! Poor ants!). He also said “mommy, water me!!”. He quite enjoyed getting soaked! He tried to get me a few times but I threatened to take the hose away if he got me wet! After about 10 minutes in the sun he told me he needed his sunglasses, it was too bright!